- Possession technology
- No, this doesn’t have to do with demons. Not the usual kind anyway. Possession technologies involve making data or content available only to people who possess a specific item or object
- QR codes are an example of possession technology. In order to access the data or content a person must possess the object that has a QR code printed on it, or be reasonable close to the QR code.
- RFID embedded in objects can also be possession technologies
- Augmented reality glyphs are possession technologies which operate much like QR codes
- As locative media devices, possession technologies fix a user’s location in relation to the possession object. For example, if a QR code is fixed to a wall then a user accessing that code is assumed to be reasonably close to the same wall.
The thing to keep in mind, when it comes to possession technologies, is that they aren’t absolutely locative. Meaning, they can only let the system designer know the location of an individual relative to an object which has the possession technology affixed or embedded in it.
For example, there are 500 posters in town which have QR codes on them. A user scans the QR code on the poster. The system designer knows that the user is now near to one of the 500 posters, but doesn’t necessarily know which one. The way around that would be to print each poster with a unique QR code–though that may prove cost prohibitive.
Also, possession technologies might be fixed to something which moves or is movable. For example, imagine a system in which content or data is made accessible via RFID. The RFID could be emanating from a toy dirigible. The toy dirigible can move. Thus placing the location of users accessing the content via the RFID is dynamic.
Possession technologies provide a different a relative location aspect as opposed to the absolute location aspect provided by GPS or other triangulation technologies.